


I Will Conquer

by crinklefries



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (mostly) Canon Compliant, Angst, Brothers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Saudade, Things Fall Apart - Freeform, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange, and Loki helps put them back together, and missing Loki, but the joke's on him because Loki is there, ragnarok fix-it, this is largely Thor being sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 16:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13685682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: If he closes his eyes and forgets how his body sags beneath the weight of his exhaustion, he can almost hear the sounds of Asgard around him, the guards standing sentry at each corner, the maids running in and out of chambers, his father's voice from the throne room. For a breath, he can hear the rustle of his mother's gown as she walks through her favorite rose garden, and the soft, hushed sounds of a little brother who is silent to everyone except for him. When Thor opens his eyes, he almost expects to find Loki standing there, but, of course, he doesn't. At the end of this day, everything from his memory is gone and Loki somewhere else entirely.(or five times thor held it together and one time he didn't have to)





	I Will Conquer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oheventually](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oheventually/gifts).



> I took liberties with the post-Ragnarok timeline, so while it's mostly canon-compliant, it's also partially not. I also played it a bit fast and loose with the structure of this, but the general idea is that it's supposed to be _five times thor held it together and one time he didn't have to_.
> 
> For [oheventually](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oheventually/pseuds/oheventually), who requested a nice dose of angst and an even better dose of Loki fixing it all. Happy Valentine's Day, I hope this takes you down and brings you all the way back up again. :)

**i.**  
  
The adrenaline wears off fast, Asgard crashing down around his ears. He watches through the the opening, the mouth of the ship closing fast, until what he sees of Asgard, what he’ll remember in the darkness of his worst nights, is his home, his father’s, and his mother’s, and even his brother’s, bright greens and the blue of the water, gold glinting from rooftops crafted by his father’s hands, and his father’s father’s, going up in a fiery, smoky red. The last vision Thor will ever have of his home is that of death and destruction, once beautiful Asgard falling into the open, catastrophic maw of Surtur.

 _What have I done?_ Is the numb feeling that paralyzes his limbs as the vision slips away. _Could I have stopped it?_ Fear grips his heart and he looks for his father’s eye, both reassuring and thunderous at the same time and finds, instead, only Heimdall, looking on kindly.

“It is gone now, my king,” he says, his voice kind, a rumble of understanding, but even there Thor hears it, the raw grief, buried beneath the steady, calm person that Heimdall is, but there nonetheless.

 _Asgard is a people, not a place_ , his father has said in his dreams and Heimdall repeats it to him, sometime later.

But he has lost so much of his people and all of its place, so the words ring hollow.

 _My king_ does not sit well with him either, but he can only bear one burden at a time.

The door to the ship crashes shut and with it, the last vision Thor will have of his homeland ever again.

  
It’s replaced by a kind of fatigue that weighs down on his shoulders until he’s drowning beneath the sound of space rushing in his ears. Thor doesn’t realize he’s stumbled until Heimdall steadies him, a hand to his elbow.

The guardian looks at him, golden eyes gleaming knowing and concern, but Thor shakes his head with a swallow.

“No time,” he says.

“If you do not take care of yourself, who will?” Heimdall asks and Thor only barely refrains from holding a knife to the older man’s throat for that impertinence alone before remembering that he is the king and a knife is not his weapon of choice.

“Where’s Loki?” Valkyrie asks dimly, somewhere behind him. She, too, is staring at the closed door as though by her watch alone, she can bring back their destroyed home.

“Gone,” Thor says, roughly. He is out there, his brother. Thor knows because he would be able to feel it if Loki had been consumed by the fire as well, would be able to feel it in the shift of the deck beneath his feet, the slap of air against his warmed skin, as though realms and worlds would shudder to a halt if he lost him too. Loki is alive, this Thor does not doubt.

“Where?” Valkyrie finally turns her eyes away from the door and swivels them on Thor instead.

“Wherever he wishes to be,” Thor says. Then, with a weariness he can’t quite hide, because on his hands is blood and on his skin, layers of ash and the sweat of a brutal battle, hard won, he turns.

  
Heimdall works hard to find rooms for what remains of their people and it’s not without a certain amount of horror that Thor realizes there’s space for each person they’ve managed to pull from the cataclysm. Thor stands at the opening to a room that once would not have fit even the entirety of the court during Odin’s lowest feast and finds pockets of space where there should be nothing but bodies, shoulders pressed to shoulders, knees nudging into thighs. The Hulk, Korg, and the rest of the Sakaarian revolution stand nervously in a corner and beyond them, Heimdall moves through the women and children, checking for injury, a hand on a face, a palm against the top of a head, and he finds some, although nothing life-ending. There lies the smallest of miracles, because they have food and bedding, but no medical supplies.  
  
Ragnarok has made refugees of the greatest species of creature known to the Nine Realms and it’s unfathomable to Thor that this should be what remains, him and a crowd of Asgardians that could not fill the largest room of a small ship. His eyes spy Heimdall and Valkyrie, the Hulk and Korg, and no one else he recognizes besides. There is no Odin, there is no Loki. There are not even the Warriors Three. Thor has lost everyone and everything. He would weep with loss if he had the time of it.

“Thor,” Valkyrie says, somewhere close to his elbow and Thor’s shaken out of his reverie. Unlike Loki, there are no places he can go, he can only stay here. “Heimdall saved the largest room for you.”

At first the words don't really register to him. He's watching a small girl with golden braids cling to her mother's skirt as Heimdall bends in front of her, golden eyes looking at her kindly. The girl has barely reached her second century, that much is clear by the pudge on her cheeks and the doll she clutches to her chest. He remembers, briefly, a time when he was much younger, only a few centuries older himself, a small boy with raven hair and bright green eyes, clutching a doll to his chest and crying because he had accidentally broken its arm. But where that small boy had toys and more toys to replace the doll besides, this little girl has nothing else. It is likely the last remaining thing she will ever carry with her from a home she will never remember again. 

"Thor," Valkyrie repeats his name and he has to swallow away the ache as her hand, usually so precise, gently presses to his forearm.  
  
Thor turns to Valkyrie and he does not know what she sees in him, but if his grief is anywhere as raw and open as hers, then he must look devastated indeed.  
  
"You would not understand," he says, even though it's not true.  
  
He has never been this person, words aimed to hurt, because that has always been Loki. Thor's anger is a visceral one, unthinking action used too easily against him. And even now he's not sure why he says it because it is not how he feels, except he cannot simply destroy anymore, he cannot take his emotion and let it light through the sky, breaking anything that offers to tell him he is wrong. Now, he is King, and his actions must be carefully taken, so he channels all of everything he cannot control and puts it into words instead. He wonders, briefly, if this is how Loki always feels and then remembers that Loki is not here either, so it does not matter anyway.  
  
"I understand better than anyone," Valkyrie says, without warmth, and it is perhaps her own kindness that she, too, only uses her words. At any rate, Thor can see her hands twitching and he winces at close calls.

"I am sorry," he says with a sigh and she turns away from him to watch Heimdall coax the little girl out from behind her mother. Her eyes, large and blue, look at the watcher curiously. He must say something because her shy little face lights up in a smile. She reaches forward and tugs on one of his braids and it is only this child, a child who has lost everything, a child who could have been Thor centuries ago, who could get away with such an act.

"It's easier the second time," Valkyrie says, after a moment. Her voice sounds too sharp, almost weary, and Thor remembers that she has not had anything to drink or dull her senses in too long a time. Everything that he has felt, she has felt, and it is more than she has felt in a very, very long time.

"What is?" he asks.

"Losing your home," she says. "But it's still not easy. You live for hundreds of years running from it, loathing it with every part of your being, but still, it's your home. And then it's taken from you and you can never go back again."

The words pull at Thor, touch somewhere deep inside him he hasn't had the courage to look at yet.

"Are you glad you got to see it?" Thor asks.

"No," Valkyrie says, immediately. Her shoulders are rigid, her eyes dark and cold. But then her lines soften. "And yes. It's complicated."

"Complicated," Thor echoes. He gives her a half-smile. "Now you sound like my brother."

Valkyrie shudders next to him.

"Don't insult me, your majesty," she says. "We may not be friends, but we are not enemies."

"Aren't we friends?" Thor asks. "We lived through a war together."

"That," Valkyrie says with a wolfish smile, "is not friendship. That is something different."

"Let me guess," Thor says.

"--it’s complicated," Valkyrie says and for this Thor finally laughs. "Come on, Lord of Thunder. If you keep staring at your people as though they will fall apart, then they certainly will."

"I'm mostly concerned someone will try to eat Meek," Thor says.

"If someone tries to eat Meek," Valkyrie says, "they will deserve the indigestion that they get."  


Thor leaves to Heimdall assigning temporary rooming to the Asgardians and Korg trying to speak diligently to the Hulk about joining the revolution's efforts.

  
The hallways feel foreign to him, cold chrome lit up with panels of cool blue and pale white. He runs his hand over the walls and is surprised to feel it warm his palm. It is nothing like the smooth, golden stone walls of Asgard, but those, too, were warm to the touch, so, for a moment, Thor does not feel as disoriented as he should. If he closes his eyes and forgets how his body sags beneath the weight of his exhaustion, he can almost hear the sounds of Asgard around him, the guards standing sentry at each corner, the maids running in and out of chambers, his father's voice from the throne room. For a breath, he can hear the rustle of his mother's gown as she walks through her favorite rose garden, and the soft, hushed sounds of a little brother who is silent to everyone except for him. When Thor opens his eyes, he almost expects to find Loki standing there, but, of course, he doesn't. At the end of this day, everything from his memory is gone and Loki somewhere else entirely.

He reaches the room that Heimdall had told him was designated for him (actually, his words were, _they are the only chambers suited for a king_ , because he can tell how much Thor hates it and Heimdall, in all of his wisdom, also knows that the only way to move past a bitter taste is to swallow it altogether). He passes his hand over a panel and it scans his print to remember, locks to his signature and his alone. The doors slide open and he looks inside, sees only half a room because he can only see things in half now, his center of gravity and sight cut cleanly through the middle. Now that he has half a moment, he tests this out, moves his head from side to side, seeing one half of the room and then the other, never quite complete in the vision he is able to take in. He supposes this is symbolism of some kind, but he's entirely too tired to quite parse out what it's all supposed to mean.

He thinks about what Loki would say if he were here, something like, _oh you always did have trouble taking half-measures, brother_ or _you never saw the picture altogether and now you never shall_ or even, _why brother, who will want to fuck a one-eyed king, you look like the worst kind of cliche._

Thor laughs a little at the thought and then he stops and wonders why, when everything has fallen apart, he can do nothing but think about his brother.

"Oh, Loki," Thor says to his phantom brother, out loud. "You were the hero after all, you bastard. All of that and I am king and you are the savior. I suppose this is all rather funny to you."

Of course Loki does not reply, because Loki isn't here, and Thor takes his eyepatch off and thinks he's already going crazy from loneliness.

He presses his palms to his eyes, both his whole one and the one he has lost, and slumps down onto the bed. He takes a deep breath in and maybe it’s this act, the act of finally sitting down and taking something in and pushing something else out, but all of a sudden it crashes over him, in an overwhelming, acute sort of way, the entire weight of what he has wrought.

It starts in his chest, a terrible quake and a terrible shake that he cannot quite control. He takes another shaky breath and it spreads, lightning quick, an awful, unfettered fire that renders its way through his veins, licking up the spaces that grief has left raw and hollow inside, like flames to kindling. It reverberates through him, the shaking, until he cannot feel his limbs or control the bright, blinding white and blue that bursts into his vision.

The lightning crawls over him, unheeding, almost wild, and he tries to take a gasping breath to curb it--this is not the time or the place, he cannot set their only home alight because he cannot stop what he is feeling--but it is out of his control. He is trembling, trying not to be pulled under by the gravity of what he has done, a rushing sound in his ears.

It does not help. He is going to shake apart, he is going to be torn limb from limb by lightning, and he will ruin this, the only home that they have left.

The thought lacerates him too, sharp, like a barb under his skin, and he tries, but he has never been good at this--he has never had the control necessary to accept failure with grace. He shudders, grasping at what is left of his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp, and just as he is about to shudder straight apart, a cool feel trickles across his chest, as though someone has touched him right where his heart is.

 _Oh, you are so dramatic_ , he can almost hear Loki say.

The feeling creeps through his blood, like cool rivulets dousing a fire that has been eating him from the inside out. It feels like his brother’s seidr, although Thor knows that cannot be true.

The lightning flickers a pale blue around him, takes a last gasp, and fades into the dark.

Thor sits there, trembling, gasping, a king almost fallen apart and a king saved, all at once.

He swallows and opens his eye. They have avoided disaster, this once.

There is a knock at the door.

“Your majesty,” a voice calls.

Thor ignores the swimming of the room and the roiling in his stomach. He is heavy with cold and his throat is thick with bile, but that too, he ignores. He steadies himself and, instead, gets to his feet.

“Your majesty,” the voice asks for him again.

“Coming,” he answers, for failure cannot stop a king. 

A king’s work, he is already learning, is never done.

*

  
**ii.**

Thor is the Asgardian equivalent of a ten or eleven year old when he realizes that he will never be as good as his brother. They are opposites, Loki and himself.

He is broader in the shoulders and tanner in the summers, blue eyes and golden hair that even at such a young age is past his shoulders and close to halfway down his back. When people look at him, they say, immediately, _oh, Thor, he will be the very image of Odin in a few years_. He is tall and growing taller. He is loud and brash and holds joy in the palms of his calloused hands and in the backs of his skinned elbows. His mother dresses him in deep, royal reds and he can barely string two sentences together without shouting, but he is beloved in an obvious way.

Loki is to Thor as the moon is to the sun. Loki is narrow and long, limbs and features sharply and delicately crafted, as though he is made of fine porcelain where Thor is made from the clay of the ground. He has glittering green eyes and dark hair that hangs just past his ears and where Thor is a bright, uncontrolled ball of energy, Loki is the calm and cool that comes in the shadows that follow. He is quiet where Thor is loud, thoughtful where Thor is unthinking. No one looks at Loki and says _oh Loki, he is Odin’s true son_ , but Thor looks at him and thinks, _oh, my little brother, he is mother’s darling._ That doesn’t matter to anyone but himself and it never really bothers him that others look at Loki and whisper to themselves behind cupped palms, never love, but a half-hidden sense of unease that Thor can never really understand, so chooses to ignore. (This, he will later learn is his greatest mistake.) He looks enchanting in hues of bright and deep greens. Green will always remind Thor of his brother’s eyes.

“What are you looking at?” Loki asks him once, when they’re children and still share tutorials. Their instructor has stepped out and Loki is sitting in his seat, face in palm, black hair falling across his features. He’s reading dutifully and Thor, who can never sit still for very long, can’t stop watching him.

It never stops being novel to him, how his baby brother can sit still for hours at a time, listening and making note and reading. To Thor, such an act is torture, but Loki takes to stillness as though he were born for it. Sometimes, even when Loki is physically there, he is so deep in thought that Thor feels he is so very far away. It’s times like this he watches him closely, thinking that as long as he has eyes on him, his little brother cannot disappear too far.

“Will you read to me, brother?” Thor asks him. He stretches his legs under the desk and yawns loudly.

“You can read to yourself,” Loki says. He pushes his hair back behind his ear and returns to his book. A minute later, his hair comes loose again. He frowns.

“But you are so much better than I am at it,” Thor complains.

“You use that excuse once a week,” Loki says. “As though of the two of us, I am the only one who can read.”

“You are the only one who likes to read,” Thor says. He smiles and reaches forward across the table, tucks Loki’s hair back behind his ear again.

“You do not even try,” Loki says, smacking Thor’s hand away.

“I do not know why I need to,” Thor grins. “When I have you to do it for me.”

Loki’s expression darkens and Thor knows he’s said the wrong thing. He shakes his head.

“I only mean we will be together always,” he says. Loki’s look softens. “Come, brother. Please. I like it when you read to me.”

Loki gives him a withering look or, well, as close to a withering look as a child can muster. He sighs and opens his book further and begins reading out loud.

Thor’s grin widens and he rests his chin on his hands on the table. He watches Loki read with ease and feels pride warm his gut, an older brother deeply infatuated with his younger one.

  
The truth, which Thor does not tell Loki then, is that while he can read admirably and while he is centuries older than Loki, it is his brother who is the better reader. When Loki reads, words become fluid and expansive, as though they have found a home in Loki’s mouth. When Loki reads, Thor can understand things he cannot on his own, as though he has become a bigger person just by hearing what someone else has written. When Thor reads, it is a chore, but when his brother reads, it is a loving act, and if Thor cannot participate in the act himself, he can at least listen to it and pretend he understands how.

To Thor, Loki is the standard to which he pins his every hope and desire.

  
Thor, on the other hand, excels with the sword. When it is him and his friends in the training yard or him and Loki training with the Swords Master, Thor feels none of the anxieties he feels with his tutorials. Even with a simple wooden stick in his hands, something loosens within him, a knot that holds tight otherwise. When Thor has a sword in his hands, when he can swing something with the sheer force of him, he brightens, the entire light of him shining. He does not think of failure then, because he has no reason to fear it, not when blade meets blade and Thor’s blade always wins.

On the training ground, Loki is the one whose face crumples in frustration. Loki is not terrible at swords, but he is smaller and his strengths are different--he is fast and agile and get him within striking distance of a dagger and he will certainly hit his mark. But close combat and furtive dagger strikes are not the Asgardian way and though Loki shows aptitude in such a fight, it is not seen with the nobility of actual swordsmanship. Thor feels bad, sometimes, watching his little brother pant with exertion, face pink, his fingers getted rapped by the Master.

Thor, standing to the side with Fandral or Volstagg, could intervene, but he rarely does. Instead, he basks in the warmth of compliment after compliment. _Thor your grip is most superb, Thor your aim with the sword is unparalleled, Thor I have never seen someone take to the fight quite like you._ He and Fandral laugh over slights exchanged during practice or he and Volstagg jostle one another before their turn on the grounds again. Not once does Thor look across and see how his brother struggles and cross to help him.

“The Master is a bit hard on him, isn’t he?” Sif observes, one day. Volstagg and Hogun have just finished sparring and Thor is impatiently turning his sword in his hand, wanting his turn to show off his skill.

“What?” Thor is only thinking about the wood in his hand, of the sound it will make when he whacks Fandral across the shoulder with it.

“The Master, Thor,” Sif says slowly, like he’s an idiot. She speaks like this to him quite often and where he once tried to use his position as Prince of Asgard against her, he quickly learned that was even more of a mistake than actually whining that she was being mean.

“What about him?” Thor slashes the sword through the air. To the side, Fandral looks at him uneasily and flaps his arms.

“For the love of Norn,” Sif curses gently. “Do you never notice anything that does not involve you?”

Thor shrugs, because he is still wrapped in the folly of youth, and grins and jumps forward to engage Fandral. Fandral shouts and they chase each other around the grounds.

To the side, the Master continues reprimanding Loki. For his part, Loki is quiet in whatever hurt he takes from the situation. It may cross his face, but he tucks it away underneath, adjusts his grip on the sword, so much bigger than himself, and tries again.

  
In this too, Loki is so much better than Thor.

This is made all the more apparent the day Thor fails for the first time.

  
He is not used to failure, Thor. Even in his worst tutorial, the instructor will allow him to pass because he is the Eldest Prince of Asgard and charming besides. While Loki excels at every tutorial they take together, Thor barely manages through. But manage he does, and with a self-effacing grin.

It is the day Baldur comes to court that it nearly falls apart. A boy about Thor’s age, Baldur is the son of some dignitary from the outskirts of Asgard. He is tall and blond and every girl who lays eyes on him falls in love. They praise his hair and praise his skill with sword. Thor immediately hates him.

It is his own folly that Baldur joins them at training that day. Having heard two of the chambermaids exchange giggles over Baldur earlier that day and turning green with envy for it, Thor boasts of his own advanced skills and how much the Master adores him within hearing distance of the other boy. Well, Asgardians are known for their tempers and challenges. Thor may not have meant it as such, but Baldur sure took it as such.

Thor is messing around with Sif on the grounds when Baldur appears.

“What are you doing here?” Thor asks, dumbly, and Baldur gives him a shit-eating grin.

“I had heard such tales of your greatness,” he says. “I wanted only the honor of testing it myself.”

Baldur grins.

“I am sure I shall lose.”

Thor flushes at the challenge, although that lasts about half a second before his natural-born arrogance takes over. He grins cockily.

“Of that I have no doubt.”

At the far end of the grounds, Loki sits, reading a book. He looks up in interest, eyebrow raised, because even at such a young age, he can spot idiocy without effort.

“The Master isn’t here,” Sif says uncomfortably. Poor Sif, she is always left trying to talk some sense into her best friend.

Unluckily for her, her best friend never listens.

“It’s just a round between friends,” Baldur grins in return. “Isn’t that right, Your Highness? We are friends?”

“Yes,” Thor grits out. “Just the best.”

Sif casts a desperate look to the only other person around--Loki--but Loki just shrugs. He, more than anyone, knows Thor cannot be reasoned with.

“Try not to kill each other,” is all Sif says when she finally relents and moves off to the side, arms crossed across her chest.

 _No promises_ , Thor thinks, but says, with a smile “I should never dream of it.”

Baldur moves his sword from hand to hand and it is only then that Thor realizes it isn’t wooden at all.

Thor looks down at his own wooden sword and frowns. A moment later, the weight shifts in his hand and one of metal appears in its place. He looks up in confusion and Loki winks at him from above his book.

“Now, shall we?”

Baldur moves into stance and Thor follows suit.

“Three rounds,” Sif says warningly. “No more. Best of three wins.”

“I will only need two,” Thor smiles.

It is a stupid thing to say, in retrospect.

  
It goes well, for about five strokes. They appear evenly matched, blades clashing against each other. Thor forces Baldur back with a grin and Baldur cuts under him, which Thor meets easily. They go around each other in a circle, predator and predator, and leap forward only to meet with a clang again. Thor bares his teeth and Baldur smiles beatifically. They hate one another, it is immediately apparent.

The mistake comes when Thor thinks Baldur will fall for a feint. He doesn’t. He sees right through Thor. Thor lunges away from Baldur’s blade and Baldur follows. The steel cuts through the leather on Thor’s arm and Thor stumbles backwards in shock.

He stumbles right over his own two feet and Baldur’s blade comes up right beneath his chin.

“One!” Sif calls out.

Baldur offers Thor a grin and a hand and Thor growls, pushes it away and heaves himself up.

“Again,” he glowers.

  
Baldur moves the blade from one hand to the other and steps back.

They go again.

  
They meet in the middle with a resounding crash, the reverberations vibrating up the metal and through Thor’s arms. Thor is strong, but he’s used to wood and wood alone. He gasps and almost loses his grip on the sword. Baldur takes the momentum to cut under again, slash at the leather bindings on Thor’s knees. The hit makes Thor hiss in pain and stumble backwards. Before he has a chance to recover, Baldur leaps forward again and slices through the air, slash after slash after slash. Thor shouts, tries to swing his sword up, but it’s too heavy and he’s too off balance. It goes careening out of his hands, skitters across the ground.

“Two—“ Sif doesn’t even get a chance to finish before Thor, seeing red, leaps forward with his fists.

Baldur’s face registers shock as Thor’s fist slams just under his jaw. He screams and stumbles back.

“Thor!” Sif shouts, but Thor cannot hear anything but the rushing in his ears, cannot think but for the pounding of his blood in his chest. He’s consumed by anger, stoked by humiliation. He wants to pound this arrogant son of a bitch into the ground.

He almost slams his knuckles into Baldur again, heavier and uglier this time, except he feels a hand cover it.

“Thor.” Somehow, Loki has materialized in front of him, hand over Thor’s fist, green eyes calmly boring into Thor’s own.

“Loki,” Thor growls. “Let me _go_.”

“No,” Loki says, quietly.

“ _Let go,_ ” Thor hisses again. He tries to step forward, tries to handle Loki out of the way.

Loki does not move. He squeezes Thor’s fist, slowly at first and then with increasing pressure, until, with a slight hiss of pain, Thor looks at him.

Loki’s other palm slides onto Thor’s cheek. He forces Thor to look at him. He takes from Thor the anger he cannot control.

“He is not worth you becoming an animal,” Loki says simply.

Thor growls and Loki increases the pressure. His palm is cool against Thor’s overheated skin. He does not let Thor look away. He does not let Thor flinch.

“With me, brother,” Loki says.

At first Thor has no idea what he’s saying. Then he notices Loki’s breathing, slow and deliberate.

With all of the willpower and patience not given to him, Thor follow his breathing—in one, out one, in two, out two.

Loki watches him all the while.

After a minute, Thor finally feels the anger break on shore.

He takes a careful, shuddering breath and his shoulders loosen.

Loki lets go.

Thor, disgusted with Baldur and with himself most of all, turns and storms off.

  
The next time Thor fails, it is—well, not easier. He does not get _less_ angry. But at the point of breaking, he does remember calm green eyes, a palm on his cheek.

He thinks about raven colored hair and breathes.

*****

**iii.**

He tries to avoid looking at his reflection in the large mirror in the room, out of the slight, irrational fear that he won’t recognize what he sees in it. He can't avoid it, however, because his reflection appears to follow him wherever he turns. He catches glimpses of the person Ragnarok has made him, shorn hair, one eye, a tired god aged five hundred years in one day. Thor finally tears off his armor and the bright red cape, still stubbornly clinging to one shoulder, strips down until his reflection keeps no secrets from him.

Thor’s body holds years of scars only he can see. There is the scar at his side from the first time the Swords Master taught him to properly hold a blade, the scar inside the crook of his elbow from his first battle on Vanaheim. He has an accidental scar from wrestling with Volstagg, heedless of the armor they both were wearing, and a scar under his chin, nicked from when he was learning to shave himself and being terribly adolescent about it. Each scar he has ever gotten left a mark that has faded with time, but Thor still remember each as vividly as the day they bled.  
  
He remembers no scar quite so clearly, however, as the ones given to him by his brother.

Thor passes his hand over each of the spots Loki has stabbed him, each of the times he has done so, in a trance, an act which is like a ritual for Thor. He has always done this, ever since the first time his brother tricked him, the false blade of a false knife digging into Thor's rib as he screamed and screamed and Loki, looking positively delighted at first, crumbled into dismay and concern. Thor remembers that first time the most fondly because it was done as an innocent prank, a jest between brothers. Loki had turned into a snake and then he had surprised Thor, stabbed him in fun, and it was all false, but Thor's screams were real and Loki's eyes, so large and bright green, were so terrified and distraught that when Frigga finally caught up to both of them, Thor could not bring himself to tell her what had happened. Instead, he had put on a smile, held his little brother to him, and told her it had been a misunderstanding, they were only playing after all.

Thor can still remember Loki's little arms around him, trembling under his grasp, just as Thor can remember the way the fake blade bit into him and where and just how real it had felt. That, he had not told Valkyrie or Bruce. That, was a secret and a memory for himself and Loki only.

So Thor passes his hand over his rib there and then on his rib a little higher, passes over a spot on his side, and then a place on his arm. He can remember each and every place Loki has ever stabbed him and also each and every place Loki has ever touched him, memories embedded into his skin.

Even at the world's end, Thor can remember everything about his brother.

"He is still alive, you fool," Thor mutters to himself as he finishes his ritual. He feels strangely calmer for it, as he always does.  "You have mourned him twice and each time he has come back, no more the worse. To mourn him again would be the greatest folly. He, who would never mourn you."

Thor turns to go to the bathroom, finally to shower, and he swears he sees a flicker of green in the corner of the mirror. When he looks at it directly, though, there is nothing there. Just a figment of his imagination, a fragment of memory. Something he longs for, like the smell of his mother or the feel of Mjolnir or, more recently, home.

  
He scrubs off the dirt and the blood, the grime of the end of the world. The end of the world left him with a lot fewer scars than he would have expected, although he did lose an eye in the process, so he supposes there is that. He cannot say that Ragnarok did not take a piece of him with it. He scrubs at his body until the water runs red and brown and his skin feels raw. He wants to feel stripped, wants to feel the water burn into his skin, sluicing down each part of him that touched the end and survived to carry the tale. For a moment his mind supplies him the image of Odin, the Odin of his youth, larger than life and fearsome, a god Thor thought would never give in to something so weak as death, and he swallows back the shudder that runs through him. He closes his eyes--no, his eye--and leans his forehead against the tiles and instead of giving in, he turns blank instead.

He breathes in and out, thinks only about the feel of water and the sound a ship must make through space, and long after the adrenaline has worn off, Thor allows himself a single moment of quiet.

  
He puts on loose pants and a tunic and he walks through his room and to the connected chamber.

He's not really surprised to find Valkyrie there. She's changed out of her Valkyrie uniform and is in something fitting and black again. Her hair is down and she's seated at the couch, two clear bottles in front of her.

Thor raises an eyebrow and sits across from her.

"And now, my liege," Valkyrie cocks him with a crooked smile, "we drink."

  
Thor is nice and thoroughly drunk by the time he flops down onto his bed.

He and Valkyrie had gone through it all, through increasing levels of drunkenness--Hela, Surtur, Fenris, the bridge, the Hulk, the fall of Asgard, everything. They had exchanged counsel, plotted a course of action, and even, Thor is almost certain, shared stories of the first person they had ever bedded. For Thor, a blonde woman older than he, either a consort of a foreign King or the daughter of a dignitary, he can't remember, and for Valkyrie, shared with another crooked smile, also a blonde woman older than she, one of the other Valkyries in fact. Thor's face had glowed red at the thought and Valkyrie had laughed herself silly.

It had felt uncontrolled. For a moment, it had felt nice.

“What is our next course of action?” he had slurred at some point, tilting back one of the clear bottles.

“Keep Meek from mating,” Valkyrie had said, giggling--actually _giggling_ \--and the two had gone down a very dark and harrowing path whispering between drinks about Meek and Korg’s potential sex lives (separately, not together) (but also, once, after two shots apiece, together).

It had been, briefly, what he had needed.

Now he lies in his large bed and stares up at the chrome ceiling and talks to his brother as though he was there.

"Oh Loki, if you were here now," he says out loud. "What a mess I have made. I have had at least two passing thoughts about sleeping with Valkyrie, but we both know she would dismember my manhood should I try.” He laughs a little here, with Loki. “We are both very fond of my manhood, aren’t we?”

It’s a thought that makes Thor blink up heavily into the dark above him.

  
Years before the destruction of Asgard, years before Midgard and Jane, years before Odin so turned his two sons against one another that Loki had tried to burn down everything he held dear in order to grasp at one morsel of his father’s pride, Thor and Loki had loved each other dearly.

  
It comes to him in pieces now, because the whole picture of it is still too dear and painful for him to fully remember. There are afternoons he will never forget, sitting together under Idunn’s trees, dappled sunlight throwing one brother into shade and the other into light, sharing a golden apple between them. There are evenings spent lounging by the riverbank, Thor’s hand under Loki’s shirt, Loki reading from his favorite book under the moon’s light, out loud, just has Thor has always begged of him. There are nights spent tumbling in Thor’s chamber, years after Thor had tumbled his first maiden, when, after one particularly sweet meal of wine and more wine, outside the door to Loki’s chamber, Thor had looked at the light cast across the strip of bare skin at the back of Loki’s neck and, reaching forward, unthinkingly had pressed his mouth against it. He remembers that first time the dearest of all, long limbs, fumbled, heated touches, mouths meeting tentatively at first and with years of unexpressed longing, after. Thor thinks that never since has he had a kiss that so completely melted him from inside out.

That is all that is left to him now, of both Asgard and his brother.

Thor lays alone, in this cold, foreign chamber, in a bed entirely too big for him, the memories of everyone he has had and loved since his brother fading to colorless recollection and his brother, above all, glittering starkly before him. He reaches forward, as though to touch him, but he is not there, of course. His fingers close on empty air. Loki is not there, nor anywhere. It is only Thor here, in a space too empty and a body that feels at once too big and too small.

It comes over him like a slow, dying gasp, the loneliness. He thinks about doing this, going forward without his brother, his family, his other half, and the stretch of time before him seems endless. He has his Midgardian friends and he has Heimdall and he even has Valkyrie and the Sakaarians, but it will never feel enough. At the end of the night, he will return to his room, alone, a king with subjects, but a king with no one to warm his bed or hold him close when he shakes.

He is surrounded by people, every moment of every day, but he has never felt loss more acutely. The emptiness gapes within him, a spiralling, dizzying chasm with no bottom. He’s finding it hard to breathe.

Thor has never been one to cry. He remembers once, in their youth, breaking his arm nearly clean in half after Loki had convinced him to jump from a window in the palace at least four stories off the ground and Thor had been stupid enough to listen. It was either the excruciating pain or the sound of his bone breaking that set him off, but he had screamed louder than he had ever before and ever has since. Loki had rushed to him, face white, tears splashing down his cheeks before he had even seen the way Thor’s arm had bent and turned purple. Loki had cried and Frigga had nearly cried, but Thor hadn’t. Thor had just shouted and grit his teeth and complained about not being able to hold a sword again for the next two moons.

He remembers crying only a handful of times in his life at all, mostly only when his brother has pretended to die. Loki isn’t dead this time, but everyone else is, anyway, or at least it feels like they are, so he isn’t surprised when his breathing becomes labored. He feels it, that strange, unfamiliar weight in his chest, the way his body seems to want to sink through the bed into darkness. His throat grows thick with feeling and he has to push his palms against his eyes to stop them watering, although he doesn’t know how this works, whether he can now only cry through one eye too.

The thought makes him laugh, strangely, and he tries, desperately, to swallow his devastation, to hold onto this one thing, his strength not to fall simply because he has no one with him to stop him doing so.

He tries. He does the only thing he can think of, so close to the edge--he talks to Loki.

“I do not know how to do this, brother,” Thor says, aloud. His voice sounds waterlogged, even to his own ears. “I have never been good at this. You have said it to me more times than I can count. _You incompetent, oaf. You are all fists and no brains, what kind of ruler shall you be? You will sleep with a king’s wife, thinking it his daughter, and we shall all die at war because of it._ ”

Thor laughs.

“I would take even your insults now, you know. That is how desperate I am.” He rubs a palm over his face, half-smile, half-delirious exhaustion. “I prepared my whole life for something I eventually convinced myself I would never see through. I suppose I thought I would never have to face it alone.”

There, again, is that word. No matter how drunk, no matter how many ways he turns it, it is to this that he must retire at the end of the day. His entire family gone, his father, his mother, his sister, the great blood of Borsson and Odinson left to die with him.

“We are the only two left, you and I, and I would seek your counsel if were here to give it to me,” he says eventually, tiredly. “Yes, it is true, you made rather a mess of Asgard, but that is not because you were not destined to be a great ruler because you are, fundamentally, quite lazy."

Thor thinks he hears some noise from the corner, a quiet laugh perhaps, but he is also very drunk, so he interprets it to be a natural part of life on a ship.

"But you hold good counsel where you like and we are the only two left besides. If I could break my crown in half and give you half to take with me, I would," Thor says.  
  
Talking to Loki has helped. He’s managed to get past the worst of it and is now growing sleepier, heavier by the moment. By his estimation he can get a good two hours of sleep before he has to wake again to speak with Heimdall about what to do.

"Do you remember?" he mumbles out loud, his eyes drooping. "We would play that when we were young too. Not one king, but two. Both of us, as it was meant to be."

“I suppose you must have forgotten.” Thor sighs again and switches sides. "And now you have left me for good, brother."

He yawns and his voice fades into a mumble. "You always leave me, in the end."

  
If the bed shifts lightly, as though another weight has joined him, Thor falls so deep into slumber that he does not notice it.

  
*

**iv.**

The first time Loki left him was not when he fell from the bifrost, dead to all those who knew him, leaving Thor behind to mourn their life together.

It was not even the worst time they fought, when Loki had told Thor he loved him and Thor called him a prince of lies, spinning falsities to cover for the fact that he had never loved him at all because he would never act the way he did otherwise, and Loki had taken so hurt he had disappeared altogether for the better part of a year.

No, the first time Loki left Thor, it was long before both, and he did not leave him at all.

  
It was one of those long, hot summers in the years following Thor’s discovery that women were quite fun and that he enjoyed them very, very much. Thor had spent the entirety of that summer courting every fetching woman on two legs and later trading tales with Fandral and Volstagg and Hogun over too much ale, once the Lady Sif had retired to her quarters. He never engaged Loki in such conversations, because Loki was his baby brother, after all, but he supposes Loki always was there, if not in his cups with Thor and the Warriors Three, then reading to the corner, or idly creating shimmering images out of his seidr in boredom on his favorite chaise in Thor’s chambers.

He is halfway through the tale of his latest conquest, a bewitching village girl with raven-colored hair, when Loki, surprisingly interrupts.

“Have you heard tell of our newest guests?” he asks. Today, he’s been rifling through a book of spells on the chaise. He stops on a particular spell and looks up at Thor, all casual grace and innocence.

Thor, midway through the recollection of how he seduced the village girl in her very tavern, pauses and looks at him. Sometimes, he forgets his little brother is there at all and only comes to the realization when Loki speaks or someone, usually Sif, chides him for being self-obsessed and arrogant. It is always a surprise.

“Aye,” Hogun is the one who, surprisingly, answers. “From the Vanir court.”

“I have not heard of this,” Thor says, looking from Hogun to Loki and then back. “Are they interesting?”

“It is a brother and sister,” Loki says. “Amora and Vali, I believe.”

“Amora, yes,” Hogun agrees. “She is said to be the most ravishing creature in all of Vanaheim and possibly Asgard besides.”

This is quite the astonishing sentiment admitted from one of Thor’s oldest friends, given the bitter rivalry between Asgard and Vanaheim. Thor has never heard a single compliment of the Vanir pass Hogun’s lips, let alone a statement so grand.

“Yes, her hair is made from molten gold and anyone who looks into the deep blue of her eyes is immediately fallen in love.” Loki says this as though he’s either indifferent or amused. “And that is nothing to say of her brother.”

“What of him?” Thor frowns. He is liking the sound of this less and less.

“Well he is no Baldur--” Loki grins wickedly and Thor can’t help it, he throws the glass nearest to him at Loki’s head.

Loki cackles and ducks it swiftly. It crashes against the wall behind him.

“--but he is said to parallel his sister in beauty.” Loki smiles sweetly at his brother and it rankles Thor, although he knows not why. “His hair is a copper that shines in the sun and his eyes the color of rich earth. When he speaks, you are overcome with a calm and understanding that fails you otherwise.”

Thor scoffs at this.

“I bet he is a terrible warrior.”

“Oh no,” Loki says, too gleefully. “He is one of the best of the Vanir.”

“If you are in so awe of him, then why do you not go and bed him, brother?” Thor says, spitefully, unthinkingly. He is cross and strangely unsettled. The suggestion should be a slap to Loki’s face, the suggestion that his brother might want to lie with men and not women, but Loki takes it in stride.

He simply smirks and settles back into the cushions with his book of spells.

“Perhaps he is the best of the Vanir there too,” Loki says. By then Volstagg and Fandral and Hogun are deep in discussion of their chances with this Amora, so they do not hear him.  
  
Thor does, though, and finishes his entire tankard of ale in response.

  
Thor’s response to this unspoken challenge is, of course, to pursue Amora aggressively. The woman is as ravishing and enchanting as the tales of her make her out to be, although there is a slick belligerence there that reminds Thor of something or someone he cannot quite put his finger on. He uses his entire charm on her, every asset at his disposal, and she entertains him, but often that seems, to Thor, to be all she is doing. Every time he opens his mouth, Amora seems to be laughing at him. It is the most lost Thor has ever been, not counting every conversation with his brother. It leaves him disgruntled and feeling unsettled. He is frustrated more often than not and goes to bed with his hand on himself.

  
That is not the worst of it, as he eventually discovers.

The worst of it comes to him, one day, when he is looking for his brother.

  
It is the longest day of that terribly hot, bright summer. Odin and Frigga are off visiting another realm and the Warriors Three have been sent on their own mission, one that their prince cannot join them on. Thor is sweating and bored. He does what he rarely does and seeks out his brother.

Loki, who is always in his books and spells, who isolates every person he meets and who has about as pleasant a reputation at court as King Laufey, is never busy, in Thor’s estimation. Books and spells and trickery--these are not things that occupy a person’s time. Thor is bored and his little brother will entertain him.

He visits Loki’s chambers and does not find him there. No matter, he knows every place his little brother loves. Thor visits the library and the dining hall, he visits the throne room, and the laboratory in which Loki conducts all of his seidr experiments. He visits all of the halls and towers in between.

Loki is nowhere to be found.

Thinking his brother surely would not leave the palace grounds without telling him, Thor leaves the palace to the fields beyond. There is a copse of trees by the river that has always been his and Loki’s favorite spot. It is here that Loki falsely stabbed him so many years ago. It is here that he and Loki have lain together, under the sun, exchanging stories, Thor expressing his desires and fears, Loki reading out loud or explaining some history that he thinks Thor should know. This is their spot and Loki will sometimes come out here to be alone. Thor should have thought of it first.

He approaches the exact tree that is theirs and sees a shadow just behind it.

 _Ah_ , Thor thinks. _Here he is_.

Thor approaches and, thinking to surprise him, does not call out or make a sound.

This is either a mistake, or fortuitous, Thor will never be able to decide.

Before he even rounds the trees, he hears what is a very obvious moan.

Thor stops in his tracks. He waits, thinking perhaps he has heard one thing and mistaken it for another. A moment later, it is clear that he has not.

Heart thumping, Thor finds a hiding place behind another tree that covers him, but still gives view of what is happening behind their tree.

It is his brother, with someone’s hands up his tunic. His cloak has been cast to the ground and his clothes are rucked up in a very obvious way. There is someone attached to his throat.

Thor cannot hear it all, but he can hear it enough.

This other person growls Loki’s name into his throat. This other person grasps Loki by the hair and pulls his head back so they can bite their way down better. This other person is not a woman. This other person is certainly Vali.

Thor can barely see but for the red that swims across his vision, something that he will later identify as anger and jealousy and hurt swirling together to blind and deafen him. Not enough, unfortunately. He sees it all.

He sees Loki move closer and reclaim Vali’s mouth.  
  
He sees Loki’s hands go to Vali’s waist.

He sees his little brother drop to his knees.

  
Thor will never be able to say how he made it out from the trees without killing Vali or Loki, or both.  His head pounding, his chest tight with rage, he simply punches the tree he is behind, skinning his fist in the process. He does not cry out. He does not make a sound. He simply leaves a hole in the tree, turns around, and leaves.

  
Loki does not tell him, but Thor cannot unsee what he has seen or unknow what he has known.

  
When he finally gets his hand up Amora’s skirt, he can only imagine what it would be like to have his hand up Loki’s tunic, as Vali did. When he finally sucks on her neck, he can only think about what Loki’s skin would taste like on his tongue.

Thor spends the rest of that entire, miserable summer half-heartedly fucking Amora when what he wishes is to be in bed with his brother.

Loki spends that entire summer falling in love with someone who isn’t Thor.

Thor does not wear jealousy or heartbreak well and when Amora and Vali are mysteriously banished from court the following winter, for reasons Loki never learns but always suspects, well, Thor does not pretend to be displeased.

He very well could have killed Vali, but he did not. That, Thor thinks then and forever, shows a level of restraint he did not know he possessed.

  
It does not matter anyway, because he continues watching Loki and, eventually, Loki catches him.

It is likely, Thor thinks as he kisses his brother that first time, that he meant for him to.

*****

**v.**

He wakes after two hours of sleep, which makes his bones creak and his muscles ache with exhaustion, but he also knows Heimdall never sleeps and they need to come to some sort of plan before the rest of the ship comes to life. Thor has never had such a head for details, but he is still Odin's son, so he has a few ideas swimming wearily through the grey fog of his mind. He's never regretted drinking one more bottle of liquor before, but he supposes there must be a first time for everything, because even the simple act of pulling a fresh tunic over his head has his entire body screaming in protest.

Thor must look as terrible as he feels, because all Heimdall does when he joins him at the head of the ship is raise an eyebrow and stare at him disconcertingly with those clear, all-knowing, golden eyes.

"You look like shit," Heimdall says, never one to mince words. Then he must remember himself because he adds, with a twitch of his mouth, "Your majesty.”

"Oh?" Thor asks. "Is it the hair or the lack of eye? Come Heimdall, do not spare my feelings any."

"You were never the one to be into his feelings," Heimdall says and Thor snorts.

"I must be dramatic for the both of us now," he says and Heimdall's mouth twitches again.

"Is dramatics what we miss from our Loki?"

"I did not know you missed him at all," Thor says. He crosses his arms and stares out the ship windows into the pitch black of space. "Did he not banish you while he was king?"

"Aye," Heimdall says. "And froze me with the Cask before that. It has always unnerved Loki that I have seen everything he wishes to hide. I did not take it personally."

"Can you see him now?" Thor asks, trying not to sound too hopeful.

"Loki will be found when Loki wishes to be found," Heimdall says. "As Loki always is."

Thor sighs, but that's true enough so he can't argue about it.

"Very well," he says. "What is our situation here, Heimdall?"

Heimdall makes some sort of a low noise in his throat that Thor is uncertain how to interpret.

“Come,” Thor says. “Be plain with me, old friend.”

"We have enough stores for a few more weeks," Heimdall answers slowly. "Very few medical supplies. Enough fuel to get somewhere, although we will need to decide where soon."

"How many have we lost?"

"Two to injuries," Heimdall says. "One from grief."

Thor swallows. It twists in his gut, each of these losses, though he knew them not.

"We must make course to a realm that will take us in," Heimdall says.

"Not many will," Thor says. His history and politics are fuzzy, but even he did not escape his education unaware of Asgard's imperial sprawl.

At its height, Asgard's colonization, imperialism, and constant warfare were heralded as a sign of strength, a sure show of power for other realms to fear. Now, in its destruction, others will remember only the fear Asgardians brought, not any of the good. They might get empathy somewhere, but they will have to be strategic about where. Odin made enemies in many places and Thor has now inherited those enemies and none of the military might to fight them.

"We have some time to decide," Heimdall says. "Until then, you must decide what to do with your people and how to tell the rest of the Nine Realms what has happened."

Thor can think of nothing he would like to do less.

"Come with me," Heimdall says. "A king must know his people."

Thor takes a breath and nods. He's a little shaky on his feet, so Heimdall braces a hand on his shoulder. Then, unexpectedly, he hands Thor a glass of clear liquid.

"And drink this," Heimdall says. "It burns going down, but you will need it to see through this day."

Everyone on his advisory council may well be alcoholics, Thor thinks as he tips back the glass. It does, indeed, burn as it goes down.

  
Thor spends the entire day making decisions he has never thought he would be any good at making. Some of them are easy--where this family go, what to do with these extra supplies, how will the Sakaarians be integrated with the rest of the Asgardians--and some of them are a little more difficult--how to keep Meek from laying eggs along the hallway and how to distribute and assign duties on ship--and some he cannot wrap his head around at all--how will they protect themselves from any threatening forces, who will take the message of Asgard's destruction to the other realms, how to ration the stores so they do not starve before they take refuge in another realm. What realm in which to take refuge. How to remain Asgard when they get there.

How to keep the despair and devastation of his people from sinking into their bones, spreading like a disease of the blood among them.

  
He’s running on fumes by midway through the day--if it really is the day, no one can really be sure in the middle of space--and when he stumbles on his own two feet against the wall, Korg grabs him by the back of his tunic and pulls him back up.

"Oop, there you go," he advises kindly, in his strange accent. "Hey, man, you look knackered. Have you had something to eat? I can offer you a banana. Meek and I shared a banana earlier, see, but I stole one to share later, I know it's against the rules, sorry man, but you want one? A banana I mean, not a rule."

And it's only then, with a large pile of sentient rock looking at him that Thor realizes he hasn't eaten for nearly a day now.

“You look like you’re going to pass out,” Korg looks at him, a mountain of concern.

“I’m fine,” Thor says. Korg puts a hand on his shoulder and Thor sways under the weight, his knees threatening to buckle underneath him. Korg raises a rock eyebrow and Thor tries not to look as outraged as he feels. The audacity of his body to be so weak, as though he were a puny Midgardian!

“I’ve seen fine, man, and I have to say, you do not look fine.” Korg peers closer and Thor and Thor opens his mouth to protest and, just then, something goes through him. An unusual, unwelcome shiver. It’s in his chest. It’s tickling the back of his throat.

“Eh?” Korg Korgs.

Thor tries to answer Korg intelligently and, instead, he just sneezes.

“Well,” Korg says, looking at Thor as wisely as a living pile of stones can. “Don’t think a banana will solve that.”

 _  
That_ , as much as Thor resists, turns out to be another sneeze and then another sneeze and then one that tears through his body so aggressively that Korg has to wrap his rock arms around Thor’s middle and lift him up.

“Unhand me!” Thor exclaims and Korg lets him go. Thor feels a wave of dizziness wash over him that he shakes off. “I am fine. I am merely...allergic.”

“Yeah, man,” Korg says. “To taking care of yourself.”

Thor scoffs at this, attempting to muster his best impression of Loki. He manages something that is half-disdain, and half-exhausted swaying. Almost as though his body is tired of pretending otherwise, the sneezes unlock something he’s been holding back all this time, an ache in his bones, a certain soreness to his throat. It comes upon him all at once. Thor feels the weariness of days of extreme stress, the lack of sleep, the held back grief, the muscle-deep ache of a body wearing down and not being put back together.

When he winds his way through the hall away from Korg, he only just manages to slump against a wall before sliding down to the ground. He sneezes again, head swimming just enough to make everything a blur of bright lights and colors.

 _Maybe I should have taken the banana from him after all_ , Thor thinks, just before he blacks out.

  
He wakes up under the covers in his room, sweating, vision blurry, heat burning through his skin. He is cold to his bones and boiling at the exact same time. Even so, his first thought isn’t that he is sick with fever, but that he was supposed to meet with Heimdall again to send pen the missives to be sent out to the eight remaining realms. The guilt almost overrides his body’s almost complete shut down.

He tries to bolt up in bed, but a hand, cool and firm, presses something wet against his feverish brow.

“Great,” Thor croaks as Loki appears next to him. “I am having visions now.”

“You should have taken the banana,” Loki’s apparition says, with a light snicker, and Thor frowns.

“Were my delusions always so specific?” he asks.

“Do you remember the summer after Amora and Vali were banished from court?” Loki asks.

Even hallucinating, Thor growls.

“Do not speak to me of those blood traitors.”

“Oh you are ever dramatic,” Loki says, amused. “You fell ill with fever after visiting Jotunheim in nothing but your under furs.”

“You told me to!” Thor whines.

“Yes, and you listened, as ever,” Loki says, fondly. “Idiot.”

“Go on,” Thor grumbles. “Make your point, ghost.”

“Your temperature was so high, mother had to use seidr on you to temper it,” he says. “But before, I came to visit you.”

“Managed to get your tongue out of Vali’s throat long enough to see your ailing big brother,” Thor grumbles some more.

“Oh he did have a nice throat didn’t?” Loki’s demon form muses. Thor tries to move again, but his body protests immediately and he slumps back. “And a nice tongue.”

“Be gone, you vile creature!”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Loki smiles. “You were so sick with delirium you thought I was the Lady Sif.”

“You likely shifted form to look like her,” Thor says. “Always tricking me, brother of mischief.”

“Yes, that would be so,” Loki agrees. “However, you thought I was the Lady Sif...as a rock troll.”

Thor, mouth open, ready to argue, pauses at this, uncertainly.

“I...may remember something of the sort.”

“That did not stop the sweet nothings pouring out your mouth,” Loki smirks. “You confessed every feeling to the Lady Sif, exposing your basest self’s most dark secret.”

Thor pales. He does not remember this.

“That was well before I kissed you,” Thor says.

“Yes,” Loki remarks. “Never were very subtle. Did you think I did not hear you that day? In the trees?”

If Thor wasn’t already ill, he would fall so right now.

“You were--busy,” Thor says. “With--him.”

“Yes,” Loki says, fondly. “Oh I did like to drop to my knees for him.”

“Loki,” Thor growls and his brother laughs.

“You punched a tree, Thor,” he says. “Did you think we did not hear you?”

Thor makes a noise of disgust. He is too tired and fuzzy to think too much on how long Loki must have known before they ever came together.

“Go on,” Thor says. “Finish your damned story.”

“Oh, that was it. Your ardent confessions to Lady Sif the rock maiden. What is it about rock trolls that inspires confessions of love, brother?” Loki grins. “We have one on this ship, do we not? Should I be jealous?”

“Yes,” Thor says, with a sigh. His head aches so and his brother’s false voice rings so sweetly in his mind that he has to close his eyes, just for a few moments. “He is a fine lover.”

Loki’s apparition pauses at this, his hand stilling as he changes out the wet cloth for a new one.

Then, shaking, he starts laughing.

Burning with fever, hungry, aching, sad, lonely, lost, on death’s bed itself, Thor listens to Loki’s voice, the voice conjured by him in delirium, and smiles.

It does not cure the fever, but it does help him bear it some better.

“Shush,” the mind creature that looks like Loki says. “Go to sleep, you imbecile. You shall kill yourself from stubbornness before you have managed to kill us all as king.”

Thor’s chest twists at that and for a moment his hand shoots out, sweaty palm closing around ghost Loki’s strangely solid wrist.

“Will you stay with me?” Thor asks, voice rasping. “I cannot do this, Loki. Not without you.”

And because he’s ill, he’s truly ill, he says what he has said only a handful of times in his life, and only ever to his brother.

“Please.”

Loki says nothing for a moment. He watches him, his green eyes clear and unusually visible. This is the most realistic hallucination Thor has ever had.

Then Loki reaches forward. He smooths back sweaty strands of gold from his brother’s forehead.

“Where would I go, brother?” he asks with a sigh. “We are in the middle of space.”

  
It is not everything, but it is enough. Thor lets out a sigh of relief and falls back to sleep, lets unconsciousness take him before illness does.

  
*

**i.**

Thor gets better surprisingly quickly, given he tries to tell no one about his sickness and he has no one who is not an apparition to help him. After a full rest and hot food, brought to him by a displeased Heimdall, he resumes his duties, also with a displeased Heimdall. They send messages out to each of the eight realms. They write to Odin’s allies. They take account of their weapons and create a plan for stockpiling more when at all possible. They keep the Hulk from throwing a tantrum in a crowded room of Asgardian refugees.

“Where shall we go, my king?” Heimdall asks him, as Thor sits on his chrome throne, staring out into the deep, unfathomable black of space. “It is time to set course.”

To his left is Korg and the Hulk, to his right is Valkyrie and Heimdall. He makes the decision not with the counsel he always expected to have, but with the one that he does have. For a moment his vision dims and he thinks he can see them, the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, his friends, Loki, his brother. The time has finally come for him to take Odin’s crown and he does so in a sea of veritable strangers. He swallows what this makes him feel inside, which is mostly incomprehensible sadness.

“Midgard,” Thor says. “We will go to Midgard.”

It is the only other place he has known and loved.

  
Thor visits with each and every Asgardian that evening, a king sharing the burdens of his people. It does not take nearly as long as it should and that, if nothing else, speaks to all they have lost. He does not know how to comfort the crying child or the grieving widow. He does not know how to give back the leg this person has lost or soothe the nightmares that one must now live with. He does not know how to heal his people, a people who were once so proud and who now go to sleep with only their memories.

He does not know how to assure them that everything will be all right, so he tells them instead that they are Asgard, that as long as they all shall live, Asgard will never die.

As King, Thor is certain of this.

As a person, Thor does not know that even he believes himself.

  
By the time he retreats to his own room, his shoulder is stooped with burden. He does not know how his father did this; how Odin carried himself so straight until his dying day when every day before he was entrusted with the livelihood of his people. How does one be king and not lose himself entirely?

Thor does not know that he can do this. He does not know that he has it in him to keep failing, to offer protection to his people and know that it is an empty promise. He does not know how to survive something so large it will swallow him as a person.

Thor is an Avenger, he is a warrior, he is the son and prince of Asgard, he is not the king. He does not know how to do this. He does not know how to be alone. He has forgotten how to be brave.

He has forgotten how to be mighty.

When he confronts his mirror again, reflection as aged and wilted as he is, he takes a deep breath. He knows he’s spiraling. He knows he does not have the time to do this. He closes his eye, fists closed so tightly on top of his dresser that his knuckles turn a stark white.

When he thinks he’s stopped shaking enough, Thor opens his eye and reaches for the tumbler of liquor set in front of him.

It is only then, when he looks up, that he sees the vision of his brother again.

He is no longer delirious, so he knows this is not out of the psychosis of his mind. This is something else entirely--an image, a trick. It is his brother toying with his heart, sending his seidr deep into space and finding him.

“I suppose you are not all bad after all,” Thor says.

“I suppose not,” Loki’s mouth twitches up at the corner, a gesture as familiar to Thor as his mother’s embrace.

Thor gives a low laugh and misses him terribly.

“If you were here, I would give you a hug,” he says. He means it.

Petulantly, he throws the stopper at Loki’s reflection.

To his utter disbelief, the image catches it.

Loki smiles.

“I am here.”

  
Thor has never been one to cry. But as his arms enclose around his brother, solid, warm, there, _really there_ , he does.

Loki, always prickly, is still for only a moment. He softens then, under the attention. His hand cups the back of Thor’s head and Thor buries his face in his brother’s neck, breathes in that familiar scent, the same smell Loki has had since they were children, and shudders.

“You are truly a remarkable idiot,” Loki says with a light laugh.

His fingers stroke through Thor’s hair, nails scraping against his scalp, there being so little of it now. He holds Thor as his brother tries to still his tears. He takes in halting breaths, tries to stop the dam that threatens to break.

All of it floods him, every moment, every insecurity, every scrap of loneliness. Every second he felt he would have to weather the end and beyond alone, it all overwhelms him. He holds Loki closer, grasps him so tightly that Loki wheezes a little.

“Thor,” Loki says. “ _Thor_.”

Thor can’t, is the thing. He tries, but his arms won’t let him. His body will not allow him to let Loki go, lest he should disappear entirely if he does.  _No_ , he thinks.  _You cannot take this thing too._

After a moment, Loki takes Thor’s face in his hands and tilts it back until they can see one another. Thor, still trying to hold it together, swallows thickly.

“I am here now,” Loki says. “Let go.”

Thor tries to shake his head, but this Loki will not let.

“I am your brother and I am here,” Loki says. He presses a firm, gentle kiss to Thor’s mouth. “Let go.”

  
Thor does. It is the only time he allows himself to.

  
He allows himself to fall apart, every single part of him, until Loki bears his weight, takes them both to bed. Even here, Thor does not let go and Loki does not force him to. Thor lets the grief wash over him, lets the raw flood of it deluge him. Loki tells him to drown and he does so. He cries for Odin and he cries for Frigga and he cries for his friends, all dead. He cries for his home and he cries for his childhood. He cries for his entire life, everything it was and everything he thought it might be, and how it will never be the same again. He lets the pain take hold of him and he chokes on it until Loki, wiping away his tears, rubbing circles into his shoulders and arms, kisses him.

Thor cries even though Loki kisses him, so Loki kisses him again and he presses his palms to his brother’s shoulders, slides them down to his chest, and eases him back.

“Shhh,” Loki says. “Shh. That is enough. Do you see now, brother? That is enough.”

Thor takes big, gasping breaths and nods.  
  
Eventually, his tears stop.

Loki hovers over him, straddles his hips, and leans down and kisses him, breathes into him, bites at his lips until they’re red and purple and Thor has to resume normal breathing just to match his brother. It takes the wind out of him, the feeling leaking out  until he come back into himself. Until he feels in control again.  
  
He holds Loki close to him, fingers splayed across the back of Loki’s neck.

Loki presses a kiss to Thor’s collarbone, then he moves up and presses another to Thor’s throat.

By the time he reaches Thor’s mouth, his hand is wandering down Thor’s chest. It stops in the space right above his brother’s heart. He presses.

“Now, brother,” Loki says. He grins down at Thor. “Will you get angry for me?”

Thor reaches up to push Loki’s hair out of the way, sparks already beginning at his fingertips.

  
They lay together after, Thor feeling calmer and more well-rested than he has in a very long time. He runs his fingers through Loki’s hair and Loki hums in pleasure.

“We are going to Midgard,” Thor says. His voice is rough, wrecked in a pleasant way.

“I assumed,” Loki says. “Do you think it is a good idea?”

“They love me there,” Thor says. “They will love our people too.”

“That seems utterly naive,” Loki replies. “But, I meant me. Is it a good idea for me to go to Midgard?”

The question hits Thor like a slight punch to the gut. He tightens his arm around Loki.

“You cannot leave again,” Thor says. “You will not leave me, brother.”

Loki laughs, tiredly.

“Oh where will I go, you oaf?” he asks. “We are in space.”

Something about that stirs in Thor a memory. He turns his head and looks at Loki.

“Have you been here this entire time?” he demands after a moment. “Watching me and laughing my struggle?”

“You are looking at this the wrong way,” Loki says. He, too, turns to look at Thor.

“How should I look at it?” Thor asks sourly.

“It is not that I have tricked you,” Loki says. He places a hand on Thor’s chest between them. “It is that I have never left you.”

Thor grumbles at this, but it warms him anyhow. It helps him catch his breath. Loki, sensing this, laughs and reaches forward. He runs his fingertips over Thor’s face, tracing the eyes and cheeks, the slope of the nose, the curve of the lips he knows and loves so well. Thor turns his face and kisses Loki’s palm.

“You will be fine,” Loki says. “You will be the king father wanted you to be all along.”

“How do you know?” Thor asks.

“Because I know you better than anyone,” Loki says. “And you are too stubborn to fail. Far more stubborn than I.”

“I will give it to you,” Thor says. “Half the crown, as I said. Stay with me. I promise.”

“Don’t,” Loki warns. “Do not give me a promise you cannot keep." He pauses. "Anyway, I do not want it anymore.”

Thor frowns because this is unlike the Loki he has known--and loved--his entire life. This is unlike any Loki he has ever met before.

“It suits you,” Loki says. He continues tracing. His thumb brushes over Thor's hurt eye, heartbreakingly gentle.

“What?” Thor, watching Loki, mesmerized, asks.

“The crown, my king,” Loki says, voice barely a whisper. “The crown.”

Thor takes in a breath, sharply. This settles around him warmly, like a blanket about his shoulders or snow dusting his forehead. It sinks through his chest, catches on his heart. He thinks he can shoulder it after all, the burden left to him, a people without a home, a home without a place, a legacy so much larger than him he can barely grasp the extent of it.

He can carry it all if he can have this, if he can just have the belief of the one he loves most; the only one left to him.

“Say it again,” he says.

“The crown?” Loki repeats.

“No,” Thor says. “The other part.”

Loki says nothing for a moment. He watches him, his green eyes clear. For once, in their entire lives, Thor thinks he can see his brother, really see him, clearly. For the first time, in their entire lives, Thor understands everything there is to know about this person before him.

Loki drags his thumb across Thor’s lower lip, nail scratching lightly across every known bump and curve. Then takes Thor’s hand. He presses a kiss to the back of it.

“My king,” he says. He turns Thor’s hand over and presses a kiss to his palm. “My king.”

He presses a kiss to his mouth.

“My king.”

  
It is not everything, but it’s enough.

By Asgard, Thor thinks, it is enough.


End file.
